Coffee, Quiet, and the Truth About Hard Things

I’m sitting here this morning with Bear stretched out at my feet, coffee steaming on the table beside me. Sunlight’s creeping in through the window, catching the swirl of steam just right. Across from me, my beautiful wife is sipping her latte.

It’s quiet in our house — quieter than it used to be. The kids are older now, out chasing their own mornings, so ours have slowed down. I like that. It gives my mind some space to wander — and this morning, it wandered back to this past weekend.

I was at another tournament. My girls didn’t get the results we wanted — and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t frustrated. If you’ve ever built something from the ground up, you know that feeling: wanting the outcome before the work has had its way with you.

I caught myself sitting there after the last game, feeling that frustration creep in — and then I remembered something Coach Kara Lawson said that’s stuck with me for a long time:

“Life is hard. It’s never going to get easier. You have to learn to handle hard better.”

And just like that, I grounded myself. Because I do know there’s a process. I know there’s no shortcut to growth — not in basketball, not in life, not in the middle of a quiet house on a Monday morning.

We all do it — we wait for things to get easier.

When work slows down.

When the kids are older.

When the money’s better.

When life stops throwing so much at us.

We tell ourselves then we’ll do the thing we know we need to do. We’ll get serious about the change we keep saying we want — whether that’s our health, our family, our dreams, or just showing up for ourselves in a way we haven’t before.

But the truth is — it doesn’t get easier.

There’s no magical morning when life lines itself up perfectly and says, “Okay, now you’re ready to do the hard thing.”

Bear knows something about that. He’s been through his own kind of hard. Before he found our family, he’d lost his first person too soon. He spent a cold stretch living out in a barn. He didn’t have much, but he never stopped trusting that better days might come. And when they did, he didn’t waste them — he leaned in.

The only thing that really changes is you.

You learn to handle the hard better.

You stop waiting for the right moment.

You start trusting that every bit of sweat, struggle, and setback is not the thing to avoid — but the thing that shapes you.

Bear’s never once asked for an easy day. He’s content with what’s here: a warm house, a cool floor under his belly, a window of sunshine, a quiet spot to rest his big old head. And when the hard moments come — the storms, the days his back slows him down a bit, the times the past tries to show up in his eyes — he still shows up for the next good thing. He doesn’t hide from the hard. He walks through it, one big paw in front of the other.

Sometimes for us, that looks like getting up early for the thing you’ve put off too long.

Sometimes it’s having the conversation you’ve been avoiding for years.

Sometimes it’s doing the quiet, unglamorous work — day after day, with no cheering section — because you know the person you’re building on the other side of it deserves that effort.

For some of you reading this, you already know exactly what I mean. You’ve lived enough life to see it for yourself. You’ve been through the hardest days you thought you’d ever face — and you’re still here. Look back at that day you didn’t think you’d get through. I bet you’ve faced more hard days since then. And yet here you are, still standing. That’s your proof: you’ve gotten better at handling hard.

And for those of you just figuring it out — keep going. The work you’re doing now, the way you’re showing up for yourself, the way you’re learning to hold it together when you’d rather run — it matters more than you know.

Whatever your hard looks like right now — don’t wait for it to get easier.

It probably won’t.

But you will get stronger.

You will learn to handle hard better.

And one day you’ll look back and see just how far you’ve come — not because life got soft, but because you didn’t.

Bear and I — and that beautiful woman across the table — we’re all rooting for you.

Keep going.

If this hits home for you today, pass it on to someone you believe in too.

In hard work we trust.